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A general rule of summer film watching is to beware any August release featuring a major star. The only reason for a distributor to hold back such a production is a lack of faith in the picture's ability to succeed in the highly-competitive early ...

Often, one of the most overlooked elements of a film is its cinematography. Paradoxically, it is also the most important, whether specifically noticed or not. Movies are a visual medium where the pictures shoulder the lion's share of the bu...

Two distinct problems of execution keep The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan's "comeback" from being anything more than another disappointing title on an increasingly uneven filmography. Despite a promising premise and effective "Shyamala...

It's a pleasant thing to encounter occasionally a movie in which people are portrayed as decent (if flawed) individuals. In The Visitor, there are no human villains. No one wears a black hat. The antagonist is The System - the nameless, faceless...

Back in the late 1980s, the team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman gave new life to Disney animation by re-interpreting several classic stories as musicals. Unlike previous animated films that had incorporated the occasional song, Menken/Ashman...

Volcano is one of those films (like last year's Twister and Independence Day) for which it doesn't matter what I (or any other critic) have to say. Disaster movie junkies will go to get their fix; those who can't tell the difference between Th...

The only reason any male could have for seeing The Vow is the hope of getting laid afterwards. The only reason any female could have for seeing The Vow is if she views the plots of Harlequin romance novels as the height of modern storytelling. Thi...

Vox Lux opens with a shock to the system – a scene so stark and well-crafted that its aftermath lingers even as it informs the life decisions of Celeste, the movie’s central character. The movie starts out immersed in normalcy – a high s...

It would be grossly unfair to criticize W. as a hatchet job - it's too clumsy for such a description to apply. This movie frequently feels like the shotgun marriage of Nightline and Saturday Night Live. Superficial, uninformative, and inert, this...

The Wackness is a period piece drama that takes viewers back to the summer of 1994 in New York City. It's three months in the life of a drug dealer as he traverses the road from high school graduation to the start of college. This is basically a ...